Abstract
Frog Sqwad is a slapstick puzzle-platformer the place as much as 8 gamers can turn into foolish frogs with sticky tongues.Have a look behind the scenes of this enjoyable, friendslop romp with developer Panic Stations, and learn how the concept got here to life.Frog Sqwad is heading to Xbox Sequence X|S, Xbox on PC and Xbox Cloud in 2026, and also will be obtainable with Xbox Recreation Go.
After we shaped Panic Stations in June 2025, we didn’t need to spend years in pre-production. We had a aim to launch our first sport inside 12 months. We wished to maneuver quick. Having labored collectively beforehand, we jumped straight into growth. Our mission was easy: Maximize enjoyable per minute. To maintain that momentum, everybody at Panic Stations is hands-on. We’re all within the engine, breaking issues, making them higher, breaking them once more after which discovering success!
We began work on Frog Sqwad nearly instantly. We shortly found that frogs are the final word platforming protagonists. Their tongues even have a shocking quantity of makes use of. They can be utilized as grappling hooks for verticality, swinging for momentum, catapults for launching teammates, interacting with gadgets, and, most significantly, kissing your folks.
Our Design Director, Joe Walsh, began by specializing in the texture of our character and controls. After the fundamentals, he explored mechanics for gamers to work collectively in enjoyable methods. The extra we leaned into the tongue physics, the extra hilarious the multiplayer interactions turned. It felt like the right match to mix 3D puzzle platforming with a friendslop extraction sport.
While many extraction friendslop video games lean into horror and darker aesthetics, our Artwork Director, Dan Hoang went the wrong way. We love these video games, however we thought there was additionally room for one thing extra lighthearted, goofy, and vibrant. With this in thoughts, we got down to make Frog Sqwad extremely saturated, daring, and memorable. Dan established the design of our frog characters actually early in growth.
As soon as the look was set, our animator, Kashif Ahmed introduced the frog to life. Since we established the artwork and animation model so early within the challenge, we had a extremely expressive frog bouncing round placeholder cubes. Even with out textures within the surroundings, the sport was already making us snigger. That’s been one in all our inside compasses all through growth. If we had been having enjoyable and laughing whereas playtesting the sport, we knew we had been not off course.
Now that the frogs had been capable of transfer round and work together within the swamp, we would have liked to begin engaged on some sewers for them to discover. Our Engineering Director, Steve Taylor, developed a customized procedural era system which locations hand-crafted rooms after which joins them collectively utilizing a sequence of pipes and tunnels. Steve labored intently with our stage designers to verify the sewer layouts felt intentional, difficult, and most significantly, enjoyable.
However what makes a ‘enjoyable’ sewer room? Initially, our designs had been extra cerebral, with logic puzzles and brain-teasers that wanted to be solved to be able to entry any meals. As soon as we began enjoying these in context, nonetheless, we discovered that gamers have already got sufficient stress from the time stress, making the entire thing really feel just like the world’s largest escape room. The tone of Frog Sqwad is far more manic than that, and gamers had a a lot better time as soon as rooms had clearer, extra energetic objectives that allowed you to get caught in with tonguing stuff.
We additionally discovered that rooms which have a transparent id are nicely acquired. Shouting “I acquired frogspawned within the room with the massive historic pyramid” is much more useful than “…I’m on the bit with the pipes in?”. We strive to verify each room has a second of co-op in there as well- whether or not it’s opening a lunch field, holding a door open, or slingshotting a hotdog throughout a lava chasm, we’re at all times making an attempt to nudge you to method content material as at the least a duo!
We began out with very maze-like sewers, stuffed with twists and turns. This regarded nice from a hen’s-eye view, however made getting round an actual slog, because the sewer must wrap all the best way round bigger rooms. Issues felt a lot better going for one thing easy and straight – every room is at all times solely a room width away. We may then layer in changes to maintain issues fascinating, like setting rooms again from the primary path and including a number of bends, whereas retaining the primary path by the sewer simply navigable and intuitive.
Bringing our first sport to Xbox has been a wild experience for the reason that first prototype in June 2025. We will’t await you all to hop within the sport and test it out for yourselves! Get able to turn into a frog with your folks! Frog Sqwad is coming to Xbox Sequence X|S, Xbox on PC, and Xbox Cloud June 2026 and shall be obtainable with Xbox Recreation Go.
Frog Sqwad
Panic Stations
Storm The Sewers for the glory of the Swamp King! Swing, leap, catapult your folks, and eat eat EAT till you develop right into a humongous Megafrog. A co-op extraction puzzle-platformer for as much as 8 gamers. Squad up together with your frog associates for a friendslop get together on this slapstick physics journey!
